Wednesday, December 24, 2014

CIA
agents “impersonated Senate staffers” while the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence was producing its report

“According
to sources familiar with the CIA inspector general report that details
the alleged abuses by agency officials,” journalists Ali Watkins and
Ryan Grim reported,
“CIA agents impersonated Senate staffers in order to gain access to
Senate communications and drafts of the Intelligence Committee
investigation.”

A source “familiar” with the
inspector general report, which remains classified, told Huffington
Post, “If people knew the details of what they actually did to hack into
the Senate computers to go search for the torture document, jaws would
drop. It’s straight out of a movie.”

But Watkins and Grim also
quoted another unnamed source “familiar with the events surrounding the
dispute between the CIA and Intelligence Committee,” who claimed the
agency did not pose as staff to access drafts. Rather, “CIA simply
attempted to determine if its side of the firewall could have been
accessed through the Google search tool. CIA did not use administrator
access to examine [Intelligence Committee] work product.”

In other
words, agents did impersonate staffers but not to access a draft of the
report. The agents wanted to see if staffers could access documents the
CIA did not want them to be able to access.
Previously, Watkins was a national security reporter for McClatchy Newspapers. She and Jonathan Landay reported
in July that CIA personnel had “improperly intruded into a protected
database” used by the committee staff. In other words, the CIA engaged in hacking, which Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein had alleged in a speech on the Senate floor.

What
Watkins and Grim report from their source matches up perfectly with
what Feinstein claimed. She suggested CIA employees had conducted
searches of committee computers and the network in which they were
operating.

The searches “involved not only a search of documents
provided to the committee but also a search of the standalone and walled
off committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal
work product and communications.” But Feinstein did not make any claims
about agents impersonating staffers.

At a national security summit
in September, CIA Director John Brennan addressed this notion that the
CIA had hacked into computers:

At the Council of
Foreign Relations, Andrea Mitchell said: Did, in fact, CIA officers hack
into the Senate computers to thwart the investigation on detention and
interrogation – thwart the investigation hacking in? No, we did
not. And I said, that’s beyond that scope of reason. I also said
during that same session that if our folks did something wrong, I’m
going to make sure that they’re held to account.

And so I submitted this issue to our inspector general. I said, I want to know exactly what CIA officers did. And when
the inspector general determined that, based on the common
understanding between the CIA and the SSCI about this arrangement of
computers, that our officers had improperly accessed it, even though these were supposedly CIA facilities, CIA computers and CIA had responsibility for the IT integrity of the system, that I apologized then to them for any improper access that was done, despite the fact we didn’t have a memorandum of agreement. [emphasis added]

That
there was no “memorandum of agreement” and the CIA and Senate committee
just had a “common understanding” is disingenuous. Feinstein declared
on the Senate floor:

Per an exchange of letters
in 2009, then-Vice Chairman Bond, then-Director [Leon] Panetta, and I
agreed in an exchange of letters that the CIA was to provide a
“stand-alone computer system” with a “network drive” “segregated from
CIA networks” for the committee that would only be accessed by
information technology personnel at the CIA—who would “not be permitted
to” “share information from the system with other [CIA] personnel,
except as otherwise authorized by the committee.”

It was this
computer network that, notwithstanding our agreement with Director
Panetta, was searched by the CIA this past January, and once before
which I will later describe.

Certainly,
impersonating Senate staffers to use Senate computer systems would not
only grossly violate this agreement in writing but also constitute an
espionage operation against the Senate.
As previously highlighted,
the intrusion into Senate computers occurred as staffers had obtained
access to a copy of an internal review prepared by Panetta that
summarized documents provided to the committee for the study. The review
was considered significant because it acknowledged parts of the
Senate’s report, which the CIA now disputes.

CIA personnel
electronically removed documents, which staffers were supposed to be
able to access, at least twice in 2010. One of those documents was the
internal Panetta review. When Brennan found out that Senate staffers had
obtained a copy of this review, he ordered “further forensic
investigation of the committee network to learn more about activities of
the oversight staff.”

The CIA and Senate intelligence committee
have been in a battle over censoring the 500-page executive summary for
the report, which is to be released in some form. Pseudonyms, which were
developed to protect CIA personnel, were redacted by the White House.

New
Mexico Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich, one of a few senators who
has been outspoken on the need for parts of this report to be released
to the public, protested in
a released statement, “Redactions are supposed to remove names or
anything that could compromise sources and methods, not to undermine the
source material so that it is impossible to understand. Try reading a
novel with 15 percent of the words blacked out — it can’t be done
properly.”

Thus, for months, the CIA and White House has managed to frustrate the release of a summary of the report.

Huffington
Post has reported that White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has
been working behind the scenes to convince senators to not publicly
criticize Brennan when the summary is finally released.

Adding another dollop of scandal to the mix, too, is the fact that McClatchy reported on
October 16 the Senate intelligence committee chose not to assess
whether former President George W. Bush and his top aides bear any
responsibility for CIA torture. The committee also elected to not
examine the “responsibility of top Bush administration lawyers in
crafting the legal framework that permitted the CIA to use simulated
drowning called waterboarding and other interrogation methods.”

What
is a report on the use of torture in government if it only assesses the
CIA but not how high-ranking officials in the Bush administration
developed torture policies? How could this report, which caused $40
million and took over five years to produce, be regarded as anything
more than a whitewash for former Bush officials who already have escaped
prosecution for their conduct?
Despite whatever is revealed in
the executive summary that may or may not be released soon, the fact
that senators—and President Barack Obama’s administration—have been
complicit in letting Bush officials off the hook is shameful.

And what about other physical evidence that debunks the interception theory, specifically the NORAD tapes,
which document the chaos and confusion of American air defenses that
morning in painstaking detail? Griffin's response is that the tapes have
likely been doctored using morphing technology
to fake the voices of the government officials and depict phony chaos
according to a government-written script. It's not surprising, he says,
that after 9/11, mainstream historical accounts would be revised to fit
the official narrative.

"This is a self-confirming hypothesis for the people who hold it,"
Meigs says. "In that sense it is immune from any kind of refutation and
it is very similar to, if you've ever known a really hardcore,
doctrinaire Marxist or a hardcore fundamentalist creationist. They have
sort of a divine answer to every argument you might make."

The fourth and final story from NORAD was the official account given by the 9/11 Commission Report,
now supported by NORAD. In this explanation NORAD received “no advance
notice” on any of the last three hijacked airliners.[11] Instead of 20
minutes of notice on Flight 175, and 14 minutes notice on Flight 77,
and 47 minutes notice on Flight 93, we were told that NORAD was not
notified about any of them until it was too late. The military was off
the hook entirely.

All the evidence for notifications and response, which had
constituted the official account for nearly three years, had been thrown
out the window. In place of these documents and testimonies, new
explanations were given for why the scrambled aircraft never reached the
hijacked airliners. These included unbelievable claims of communication
failures and misdirection of the scrambled jets, as well as the
introduction of a never-before mentioned “Phantom 11” scenario.[12]

The 9/11 Commission Report account was supported two years later by an article in Vanity Fair.
[13] Allegedly, the author of the article was given privileged access
to audio tapes that were not available to the public. Although the
newly revealed “NORAD tapes” ostensibly bolstered the Commission’s new
timeline, credible explanations were never given for throwing out the
years of testimony and evidence that supported entirely different
timelines.

The activistnyc.wordpress.com
blog responds to the "debunkers" and demonstrates why Griffin believes
what he believes, but also why his view of how the tapes were manipulated
isn't necessary to conclude the tapes are not the end of the story.

A page on antiwar.com claims that Michael Bronner’s Vanity Fair
article has “debunked” two “conspiracy theories,” including “(2) That
the air force was ordered to ‘stand down’ on 9/11.” What????
Admittedly, since none of the hijacked planes were ever intercepted, one
could dismiss the no-shoot order as irrelevant. But there was indeed
such an order. The mere existence of such an order was anything but
“debunked” by Bronner’s article. To “debunk” that, one would have to claim that tapes were voice-morphed – with no conceivable motive.

Despite the lies of Cheney in his subsequent TV
interviews and statements given under oath to the 9/11 Commission, those
shoot down orders never arrived, even after United 93 had crashed in
Pennsylvania.

A reasonable summary.

Another Prison Planet article, NORAD Tapes Expose Lax Military Attitude On 9/11 Air Defense
by Paul Joseph Watson, August 4 2006, deals with the lackadaisical
attitude of the Navy air traffic controller who was in charge of the two
planes from Langley Air Force Base. Watson says, “NORAD tapes released
this week which shed light on the negligence of the U.S. military in
providing adequate air defense on 9/11 contain a conversation with a
Navy air traffic control operator that provides another smoking gun for
the assertion of a deliberate stand down policy on the morning of the
attacks.” Of course, the Navy ATC himself probably just didn’t know
what was going on. But why didn’t he know? Why wouldn’t he have been told?

Griffin’s main point is that the tapes themselves are suspect. For one thing, the tapes contradict many previous accounts, by many different officials, including people in both the FAA and the military.

Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission’s tapes-based account differs from
all previous accounts in an amazingly consistent way, consistently
placing 100% of the blame upon the FAA, whereas all previous accounts
consistently do not place 100% of the blame upon the FAA.
According to the 9/11 Commission’s tapes-based account, the military
was not informed at all about any of Flights 175, Flight 77, or Flight
93 until after they had crashed. On the other hand, in all previous
accounts, from the military as well as from the FAA, the military was
notified about at least Flights 175 and Flight 77 (and, in many
accounts, Flight 93 too) before they crashed. In all previous accounts,
the military also tried to do something about each flight they heard
about before it crashed. Also, according to the 9/11 Commission’s
tapes-based account, the fighters from Langley were scrambled not
in response to any real hijacked plane, but only in response to
“phantom Flight 11,” a false FAA rumor that WTC 1 had been struck by
something other than Flight 11, and that Flight 11 was still in the air
and on its way to Washington, D.C. According to Griffin, “phantom
Flight 11″ had never been mentioned in any previous reports.

So, if the tapes are genuine and all previous reports are false, then
it is understandable why the FAA would have lied earlier, to cover its
own ass. But, Griffin argues, why would military officials lie to cover
the FAA’s ass, at the expense of opening themselves up to
charges of incompetence or worse? (It is also very unlikely that
military officials could have honestly forgotten that they were informed
too late to do anything about any of the hijacked planes.)

Furthermore, Griffin finds it incredible that the FAA could actually
be as incompetent as the tapes portray. I’m not as incredulous as
Griffin is about the possibility of false alarms, such as “phantom
Flight 11,” on such a panic-inducing day as 9/11. But it does seem very
unlikely to me that anyone in the FAA would have been so extremely lax
about reporting any abnormal behavior by either Flight 77 or Flight 93
after both WTC towers had been hit, at which point it was clear that
there was a coordinated attack. It also seems very unlikely to me that
anyone in either the Boston FAA Center or the New York FAA Center would
have been lax about communicating with the military about Flight 175,
after Flight 11 crashed into WTC 1.

Griffin then suggests that the tapes could have been fabricated via
voice-morphing. This is possible, but I think it more likely that some
of the timestamps may have been massaged a bit. Doctoring the
timestamps would have been simpler to accomplish than a convincing
voice-morph.

Griffin also endorses the idea that phone calls from the passengers
on Flight 93 may have been voice-morphed. That’s an idea I personally
find very hard to believe. As far as I am aware, no families or
co-workers of the passengers have ever expressed any doubts about the
authenticity of those calls. And a convincing voice-morph would have
required lengthy voice samples plus familiarity with the person’s
idiosyncrasies. That being the case, it seems to me more likely that
the “cell phone” calls were in fact Airfone calls, and that the cell
phone vs. Airfone issue was merely an error in early reports.

Back to the NORAD tapes. It should be noted that the tapes do not
include absolutely everything that happened. They do not include
conversations amongst the high-level officials, for example. Only on
some phone lines were conversations recorded. In addition, perhaps
there might have been some cherry-picking of the conversations that were
recorded.

Griffin writes, regarding his belief that the NORAD tapes were fabricated:

But Would All Those People Participate in a Lie?

There is, to be sure, a rather obvious objection to this hypothesis:
If the NORAD and FAA tapes as described by Bronner have both been
altered, then many military and FAA personnel would know this. Surely at
least some of them would speak up? Surely not everyone would be willing
to be complicit in such an enormous fraud by remaining silent!

However–and this could turn out to be the most important implication
of the new story–it is now known that members of both the FAA and the
military are capable of such deceit and complicity. On the one hand, if
the new story is true, then many people in both the FAA and the military
knew the old story to be false and yet supported it–whether actively or
by their silence–from 2001 to 2004. On the other hand, if the new story
is false, then many people in both the FAA and the military know this
and yet have supported it–whether verbally or merely by not challenging
it–since the publication of The 9/11 Commission Report in July 2004.
Given Bronner’s portrayal of some of the people at NEADS, to be sure, it
is not pleasant to think of them as consciously participating in an
enormous lie. But we have no choice, because if the new story is true,
then they were complicit in an enormous lie between 2001 and 2004. And
if so, we have no reason to believe they would not participate in a new,
improved lie.

I would add that, if voice-morphing were not done but
only the timestamps were altered, then a lot of people might not even
notice the changes, or might honestly just assume that both their own
and everyone else’s memories were wrong.

In David Ray Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposed, he writes:

And for what's it's worth there is an individual online who claims there exists proof of the tapes being manipulated, who wrote:

My name is david .
and i would like to pass information about what happen on 911, 2 days
before (sept 9th and 10th) but i would rather post a mp3 which will
cover alot of info. my lawyer told me i should wait until there a new
investigation, and its very dangerous for me to post, blog, or even tell
anyone what happen. this is very hard for me to write it down. or on
video. before i start let me give you some back ground. 1 i am a DJ, re
mixer, and producer. for over 18 years...

the NORAD tapes
was recorded on a Digital Audio Tape recorder. when loose change got of
hold of the NORAD tapes on mp3 which is a no no because its WAY better
if you get a copy of dat to dat not mp3 !!! because when you record 24
people at the same time its lock it will never go off (synchronisation)
every producer know this. if you play one by one using windows media
player its not cutting it. on a adat you have timings hr, min, sec,
(timing is a key thing ) what they did they moved sections, fade,cut,
paste,adding distortion,and a filter. my lawyer has 4 of the names on
who manipulated the NORAD tapes which all 4 are in deep S@@@ because 2
of them are cia the other 2 have no clue. basically Evidence
tampering.obstruction of justice also Obstruction of criminal
investigations. i have the names but i cannot tell no one i leave it as
that there so much about this case its mind blowing. i even got death
threatS as soon I GOT THE NAMES. my lawyer is trying to contact other
prosecutors around the country to round up other well know producers and
Engineers. as soon a new investigation kicks in i have to testify with
other producers and witnesses. i will explain more please chill out and
if i were you guys contact EVERYONE AS MUCH YOU CAN FROM alex jones ,
loose change cats,we are change, you name it. because after i post the
mp3 im gonna have to request that this topic must be deleted. on the 5th
of sept . forgive my writings much love NJ1

In an August 2006 Vanity Fair article based on the
recordings, Bronner therefore referred to these "NORAD tapes" as "the
authentic military history of 9/11." [3]

However, the NORAD tapes are not the only record of the actions of
NORAD and its Northeast Air Defense Sector on September 11. In her
recent book Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11,
commercial pilot and author Lynn Spencer revealed the existence of
other crucial documentation. Yet, more than seven years on from 9/11,
this record remains unreleased to the public and its contents are almost
completely unknown.

Spencer described how, at around 9:25 a.m. on September 11, Master
Sergeant Joe McCain, the mission crew commander technician at NEADS,
received a call from the Continental U.S. NORAD Region (CONR)
headquarters at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Major General Larry
Arnold and his staff at Tyndall had been trying to gather information
about the ongoing crisis, and wanted to know the transponder codes for
the two fighter jets that had been launched in response to the first
hijacking. The CONR officer that made the call told McCain to "send [the
transponder codes] out on chat." By "chat," he meant NORAD's computer
chat system. [4]

NORAD'S COMPUTER CHAT SYSTEM

According to Spencer, the chat system used by NORAD that day was
"similar to the chat rooms on most Internet servers, but classified." It
had three chat rooms that could be used by anyone with proper access.
One room was specifically for NEADS, and connected its ID, surveillance,
and weapons technicians to its alert fighter squadrons, and was where
NEADS received status reports on fighter units and their aircraft.
Another chat room was for CONR, and was where its three sectors--NEADS,
the Western Air Defense Sector (WADS), and the Southeast Air Defense
Sector (SEADS)--communicated with each other and could "upchannel"
information to CONR headquarters. The third room was the Air Warfare
Center (AWC), where senior NORAD commanders from the three NORAD
regions--CONR, Canada, and Alaska--communicated with each other.
Although NEADS was allowed to monitor this room, it could not type into
it. [5]

Furthermore, when a training exercise was taking place, one or two
additional chat windows would be open specifically for communicating
exercise information, so as to help prevent it being confused with
real-world information. [6] This fact is of particular significance, as
the whole of NORAD, including the staff at NEADS, was involved in at
least one major training exercise the morning of 9/11. The annual
"Vigilant Guardian" exercise has been described as "an air defense
exercise simulating an attack on the United States," and was scheduled
to include a simulated hijacking that day. [7]

Paul Schreyer: Vigilant Guardian - the fake inserts on NORAD
radar screens. Are you sure, that this was "value added", as you write
about the impact of this exercise? I think this was "noise added".

Miles Kara: Vigilant Guardian had not started up that morning when
Cooper called. But NEADS was poised, the Battle Cab was operational, and
additional assets were available without the need to recall anyone.
That was a major plus as they expanded operations that morning. Plus,
Nasypany could immediately talk to Marr, in fact could turn around and
see him behind glass in the Battle Cab. When the electronic feed started
up Nasypany recognized that immediately and gave orders to suppress the
feed, orders that were carried out instantly. You can surmise all you
want that it was "noise added" but you are simply wrong, based on the
NEADS tapes, primary source information. Take the time to reread my
Nasypany series to understand how well NEADS functioned that morning,
over all.

Paul Schreyer: Just to understand you right: do you say there were no fake inserts on NORAD radar screens that morning?

Miles Kara: Just briefly at NEADS, a matter of seconds until Nasypany took action to suppress the feed.

Paul Schreyer: If it is right what you say, that the feed of fake
inserts on the radar screens was suppressed immediately, than why all
the chatter at NEADS as for example "I think this is a damn input"
(9:04), "turn your sim switches off", "let´s get rid of this damn sim"
(9:30) and so on? At what exact time was the feed suppressed?

Miles Kara: Read my article again, the one where I discuss, in detail, the times that the exercise is mentioned. (http://www.oredigger61.org/?p=4685)
It was only when I did the research for that article that I correlated
Nasypany's order with the immediate reaction by the head of the
Surveillance Section. Before that I was not aware of the sequencing of
those comments. The comment that "I think this is a damn input" is
simply a muse at the time, based on years of experience in dealing with
both exercises and real world. You need to review my work on Vigilant
Guardian to gain a sense of how NEADS balanced real world and exercise
events concurrently. They were well practiced in the art and knew
exactly what they were doing. Outsiders can never gain an appreciation
for how professional NEADS was that morning, they performed very well,
given the lead times they had, or lack thereof. The best perspective so
far is my Nasypany series.

Paul Schreyer: You mention in your article the "turn your sim
switches off" dialogue at 9:30. And you suggest that the sim feed
startet just in that minute. How do we know that it hadn´t started well
before?

Miles Kara: We know this. The exercise had not yet started, and
never started. We know that the Surveillance Technicians did not
acknowledge any exercise feed on their scopes, prior. We know that
Nasypany's reaction was instantaneous and we know from his experience
and professionalism that he would have noticed it earlier if it had
occurred. We also know that any such electronic feed had to support an
exercise inject. There was no such inject, at least as of the time that
Cooper called, since the exercise had not yet started. What we don't
know is the time that the first inject was supposed to occur. It may be
that I can sniff that out from the other channels and perhaps a written
scenario somewhere, but I don't really see the need to do that.

Many prominent 9/11 researchers claim that the US air defence system would have prevented the 9/11 attacks under normal circumstances, but were unable to do so because air traffic controllers, the FAA and NORAD were confused by "war games" that were running at the same time...

...There’s a distinct lack of evidence for any of these exercises adversely affecting the response to 9/11, or even to contradict the NORAD and 9/11 Commission view that they actually helped.

However, there is a substantial amount of evidence indicating that things were not as easily managed as Kara and 911myths let on. And there are certainly experts "well practiced in the art,"
just like those mentioned by Kara, who think things could have got very intentionally
confusing that day. In a press release posted on 911truth.org entitled, "Expert Panel Reports False Accounts of US Political and Military Leaders on 9/11," it's noted that:

The international Panel also discovered that four massive aerial practice exercises traditionally held in October were in full operation on 9/11. The largest, Global Guardian, held annually by NORAD and the US Strategic and Space Commands, had originally been scheduled for October 22-31 but was moved, along with Vigilant Guardian, to early September.

Although senior officials claimed no one could have predicted using hijacked planes as weapons, the military had been practicing similar exercises on 9/11 itself -- and for years before it.

The Panel, discovering widespread reports of confusion and delays in the defense response, looked into who was overseeing the air defenses after the second Tower was hit at 9:03 AM.

Going to the report itself, we learn that, "Although the 9/11 Commission mentioned only one military exercise – Vigilant Guardian – that was scheduled for 9/11, evidence shows that at least 12 exercises had been scheduled for that day."

The first bio listed on the 9/11 Consensus Panel is that of "Dr. Robert Bowman, former head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at the US Air Force Institute of Technology, and the Director of Advanced Space Programs Development (“Star Wars”) under Presidents Ford and Carter."

The WhatReallyHappened.com page, "War Games: The Key to a 9/11 USAF Stand Down," notes that Dr. Bowman who is "so decorated with medals and honors they could fill a patriotic Christmas tree... has inside knowledge of military protocol, and has stated that it is apparent to him that the massive military exercises that took place on September 11, 2001 were intentionally staged to confuse civil defenses."

The panel, whose members also include a retired US Navy fighter pilot who subsequently spent 27 years as an airline pilot, as well as a U.S. Air Force pilot who served for 31 years, continues their report:

One would expect that having so many exercises would have caused some confusion, which might have slowed down the military response. Indeed, statements to this effect have been made:

According to a summary of a 9/11 Commission interview with Canadian Lt. Gen. Rick Findley, who was at NORAD as the Battle Staff Director at Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center (CMOC) on September 11,2001, there was, following the second attack on the Twin Towers, “confusion as to how many, and which aircraft, were hijacked. There was no situational awareness that was directly credible, and CMOC was relying on the communications over the phone lines with its operations sectors. Findley opined that AA 11 was reported still airborne and headed towards Washington, D.C. because of the added confusion of many hijack reports.” - Source

At Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, DC, FAA Air Traffic Controller James Ampey, stationed at Andrews Tower, reported in a 9/11 Commission interview that there were an unusually high number of aircraft taking-off and landing at Andrews that morning because previously scheduled military exercises were underway. The radar screens were showing “emergencies all over the place.” - Source

General Larry Arnold, commander of NORAD’s Continental U.S. Region, said: “By the end of the day, we had 21 aircraft identified as possible hijackings.” - Source

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke: “There were lots of false signals out there. There were false hijack squawks, and a great part of the challenge was sorting through what was a legitimate threat and what wasn’t.” - Source

This study by 9/11 researcher "Shoestring" is the most important reference, it begins:

Although it has been widely reported that four commercial aircraft were hijacked over the United States on September 11, 2001, what is less well known is that while the terrorist attacks were taking place and for many hours after, numerous additional aircraft gave indications that they had been hijacked or, for other reasons, were singled out as potential emergencies. More than 20 aircraft were identified as possible hijackings, according to some accounts, and other aircraft displayed signs of emergencies, such as losing radio communication with air traffic controllers or transmitting a distress signal.

Reports about these false alarms have revealed extraordinary circumstances around some of the incidents and bizarre explanations for how they arose. For example, it has been claimed that the pilots of one foreign aircraft approaching the U.S. set their plane's transponder to transmit a code signaling they had been hijacked simply to show authorities that they were aware of what had been taking place in America that morning. Another aircraft reported as transmitting a distress signal while approaching the U.S. was subsequently found to have been canceled, and still at the airport.

There may be innocent explanations for some of the less serious false alarms, such as those simply involving the temporary loss of radio communication with the plane, which is a common occurrence and happens on a daily basis. But, viewed in its entirety, the evidence appears highly suspicious and raises serious questions. Why, for example, were there so many false alarms on September 11? Why did so many of them involve false reports of hijackings or aircraft falsely signaling that they had been hijacked? The details of specific incidents that have been reported, which I describe below, show that these false alarms must have been something more than just the results of confusion caused by the terrorist attacks.

MILITARY EXERCISES INCLUDED SIMULATED HIJACKINGS
One possibility to consider is that some of the false alarms related to training exercises taking place on September 11. There is evidence supporting this contention.

COMMANDERS THOUGHT HIJACKING WAS PART OF THE EXERCISE

OFFICER WHO HELPED DESIGN EXERCISE MISTOOK ATTACKS FOR SIMULATION

NEADS PERSONNEL JOKED ABOUT THE ATTACKS

NEADS OFFICER HAD 'NEVER SEEN SO MUCH REAL-WORLD STUFF HAPPEN DURING AN EXERCISE'

EXERCISE RESEMBLED 9/11 IN DAYS BEFORE ATTACKS

MOCK AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER IN EXERCISE USED NAME OF KEY CONTROLLER WHO RESPONDED TO 9/11 ATTACKSAnother
remarkable aspect of Vigilant Guardian is that in the days just before
September 11, the actor playing the air traffic controller who gave
NEADS information about the simulated events said their name was "Colin
Scoggins," even though it was unusual for a mock controller to give
their name during an exercise. And then, on September 11, the real Colin
Scoggins--an employee at the FAA's Boston Center--happened to be the
key person calling NEADS with information about the actual attacks, even
though it was not his usual role to perform such a duty. This curious
apparent coincidence could surely have made it more likely that NEADS
personnel would mistake the 9/11 attacks for part of the exercise.

CONTROLLER WAS 'THE ONLY ONE' GIVING NEADS INFORMATION DURING 9/11 ATTACKSWhile
an actor calling himself "Colin Scoggins" gave NEADS information about
simulated exercise events in the two days before 9/11, apparently by
coincidence, the real Colin Scoggins served as a key liaison between the
Boston Center and NEADS on September 11. Scoggins has said he made
"about 40" phone calls to NEADS that day. [37] Robert Marr said Scoggins
was in fact "about the only one that was feeding us information [during
the attacks]. I don't know exactly where he got it. But he was feeding
us information as much as he could." [38] According to Lynn Spencer,
other than the calls from Scoggins, NEADS's only source of information
on the hijacked planes was "the coverage on CNN." [39]...Therefore
the unlikely and unusual situation arose that during the exercise on
September 9 and September 10, and also during the attacks on September
11, NEADS was given key information by someone calling himself Colin
Scoggins. The question arises as to whether this created any confusion
during the 9/11 attacks, causing some NEADS personnel to think
information coming from the real Colin Scoggins was part of the
exercise. While the person answering calls from Scoggins on September 11
may have recognized that the caller had a different voice to the actor
playing Scoggins on the previous days, other NEADS personnel could have
been unaware of the different voices, and only have heard from their
colleagues that a particular piece of information came from "Colin
Scoggins."

PREVIOUS EXERCISES INCLUDED SCENARIOS SIMILAR TO 9/11 ATTACKSIt
was not just exercise events during the previous few days that may have
resulted in confusion at NEADS on September 11. What could also have
increased the likelihood that NEADS personnel would mistake the 9/11
attacks for part of the exercise is the fact that during the previous
two years, these personnel had participated in other exercises based
around scenarios closely resembling what happened on September 11.

For
example, the previous Vigilant Guardian, held in October 2000, included
a scenario in which a pilot planned to deliberately crash an aircraft
into a skyscraper in New York. The simulation involved an individual
stealing a Federal Express plane with the intention of using it for a
suicide attack on the 39-story United Nations headquarters building.
[44]

Another exercise NEADS took part in, called "Falcon Indian"
and held in June 2000, was based on the possibility of a "Communist
Party faction" hijacking an aircraft bound from the western to the
eastern United States. The fictitious hijackers intended to crash the
plane into the Statue of Liberty, located close to the Twin Towers, in
New York Harbor. [45]

Remarkably, one NORAD exercise, held at an
unspecified time in the two years prior to 9/11, was based on the
possibility of a hijacked aircraft being used as a weapon and
deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center. [46] Furthermore,
NORAD has stated that most of the four major exercises it held each year
before 9/11 "included a hijack scenario." [47] So, although most of the
personnel on the NEADS operations floor were unaware beforehand what
the exercise was going to entail on September 11, they might surely have
wondered if the plane hijackings and the attacks in New York that day
were simulated, since these events so closely resembled scenarios played
out in previous exercises.

EXERCISES INCLUDED MOCK TV NEWS REPORTSOne
might think that television coverage of the 9/11 attacks would have
convinced those at NEADS that they were dealing with actual terrorist
attacks rather than simulated ones. However, there is evidence that
casts doubt on this assertion.

It is known that simulated
television news reports had been used in training exercises before 9/11.
For example, a two-day exercise was held at Andrews Air Force Base,
Maryland, in June 2001, called "Dark Winter," based on the scenario of a
smallpox attack on the United States. This exercise, according to New York
magazine, included "simulated news clips from an imaginary cable news
network called NCN." [48] Whether NORAD exercises prior to 9/11 included
simulated television footage is unknown. But this possibility should
certainly be investigated.

The possibility should also be
investigated that NEADS personnel mistakenly thought television news
reports of the 9/11 attacks were video created to make their exercise
seem more realistic. Unlikely as it might seem, evidence shows this
scenario is plausible.

It has been reported that volunteers
taking part in another military exercise on the morning of September 11
did incorrectly think that television coverage of the attacks in New
York was video footage created for their exercise. That exercise, called
"Timely Alert II," was held at Fort Monmouth, an Army base about 50
miles south of New York City, and was based around a simulated
biochemical terrorist attack at the base. Exercise participants later
recalled that "when they first saw live footage of the events unfolding
at the World Trade Center, they thought it was some elaborate training
video to accompany the exercise." One training officer was told by a
participant, "You really outdid yourself this time." [49] If workers at
Fort Monmouth could make this error, surely those at NEADS could have
done so too.

Because of the rescheduling of military exercises normally scheduled for different times, there were an extraordinary number of exercises underway the morning of September 11, 2001.

The Department of Defense and the 9/11 Commission failed to report all but one of the exercises that occurred that morning.

They also denied that such exercises slowed down military responses to the attacks.

Had the 9/11 Commission reported the full extent of the exceptional number of exercises it knew were operating that morning, the above-quoted statements by military officers such as Eberhart, Marr, and Myers – that the exercises did not, by causing confusion, slow down the military response – would have seemed implausible.

Any new investigation should probe the fact that, taken together, this evidence suggests that:

(1) the Pentagon, after creating conditions that confused the military response to the attacks, sought to cover up its creation of these conditions, and that

(2) the 9/11 Commission facilitated this cover-up by not making public the information held in its records cited above.

NORAD commander-in-Chief Ralph Eberhart was asked by the 9/11 Commission if these war games "helped" response to the 9/11 attacks and responded nonsensically, "sir, my belief is that it helped because of the manning, because of the focus, because the crews - they have to be airborne in 15 minutes and that morning, because of the exercise, they were airborne in six or eight minutes. And so I believe that focus helped." This was clearly a ridiculous statement; if the war games "helped" response to the attacks, why were none of the planes intercepted during the attacks; what "response" was there at all? In fact, there is very strong evidence that these drills hindered response since they moved air defenses away from New York and Washington... and created general confusion.

After much research, I still find these expert opinions the most compelling.

"I knew
within hours of the attacks on 9/11/2001 that it was an inside job.
Based on my 11-year experience as an FAA Air Traffic Controller in the
busy Northeast corridor, including hundreds of hours of training,
briefings, air refuelings, low altitude bombing drills, being part of
huge military exercises, daily military training exercises, interacting
on a routine basis directly with NORAD radar personnel, and based on my
own direct experience dealing with in-flight emergency situations,
including two instances of hijacked commercial airliners, I state
unequivocally; There is absolutely no way that four large commercial
airliners could have flown around off course for 30 to 60 minutes on
9/11 without being intercepted and shot completely out of the sky by our
jet fighters unless very highly placed people in our government and our
military wanted it to happen. - Robin Hordon,
Former FAA Air Traffic Controller at the Boston Air Route Traffic
Control Center, located in Nashua, NH, 1970 - 1981. FAA certified
commercial pilot. FAA certified Flight Instructor and certified Ground
Instructor. After leaving the FAA, he had a 12-year career in the field
of comedy ending up as artistic coordinator for "Catch A Rising Star" in
Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA.

911-GATE
emerged on August 31, 2010--the day that the truth about September 11,
2001 was finally released to the public. 911GATE is the nickname for the
staggering 3+ terabytes (nearly 5TB) of video evidence that was
declassified by the government one week before the 9th anniversary of
9/11 in 2010.

The
Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel (STEALING FROM YOU through
the hidden tax of inflation) it is NOT an agency of the Federal
Government and will collapse our current debt based fiat monetary system
to bring in the new cashless digital economic slave system.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

The U.S., our allies, and Iran announced that they are nearing a
comprehensive agreement that would prevent a nuclear-armed Iran and
avert a disastrous war of choice in the Middle East. They just need a
bit more time to work out the details. This is a delicate process and
any sudden moves on either side could end negotiations.

A broad coalition of progressive organizations are calling for no new sanctions because diplomacy is working.

We are close to a historic agreement but we need a little more time.
The United States faces a critical choice. If we impose new sanctions
now, Iran could cut off negotiations and take us back to square one.

We need to avoid yet another war in the Middle East. Stand strong and for diplomacy.

Last month, 9/11 parents Loreen and Matt
Sellitto hosted an informative event focused on one of the most
important yet least-understood aspects of September 11: the extent to
which the terrorists received support from foreign governments—and the
extent of the government’s knowledge of that support, both before and
after the attacks.

Former Senator Bob Graham

Held in Naples, Florida, the November 11
event was called “The Untold Story of 9/11: A Conversation with Bob
Graham.” Following opening remarks from host Loreen Sellitto and
from Terry Strada of 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism,
the event featured three speakers:

Former SenatorBob Graham, the most prominent voice outside government fighting for declassification of the 28 pages.

Broward Bulldog editor Dan Christensen, who broke
the story of the FBI’s discovery of a 9/11 cell in Sarasota, and who
continues working to bring FBI investigation documents into the
daylight.

AttorneyTom Julin, who is helping the Broward Bulldog in its effort to overcome the government’s stonewalling.

Here, we cover many of the highlights; a full video of the event can be found at the bottom of the page.

Bob Graham on the San Diego Cell

Graham’s remarks centered on the story of Omar al-Bayoumi, a man who,
before 9/11, held what Graham called a “ghost job” with a Saudi company
in San Diego. Bayoumi, whom the FBI had previously identified as a
Saudi agent, helped two 9/11 hijackers establish themselves in the
United States.

Bayoumi later claimed that—on the same day he made a two-hour drive
to Los Angeles to attend a meeting with the director of religious
affairs at the Saudi consulate —he just happened to become acquainted
with future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar in a
Middle Eastern restaurant after he overheard them talking Arabic in
Saudi accents.

This encounter occurred soon after the pair’s arrival in Los Angeles,
which in turn happened just days after they attended a terrorist summit
in Malaysia. On the spot, Bayoumi invited the two to move to San Diego,
where he furnished them with generous assistance, including the initial
payment on an apartment and spending money. Adding to the cluster
of coincidences, Bayoumi’s salary soared upon Hazmi and Mihdar’s
arrival, while his wife began receiving payments from the Saudi embassy
in Washington.

Broward Bulldog Battles Feds Over Sarasota Investigation

Christensen’s quest for answers about foreign sources of support of
the 9/11 hijackers began in 2011 with a tip passed to him by Anthony
Summers, who, with his wife Robbyn Swan, had just completed their
book, “The Eleventh Day.”
Summers and Swan had learned about an FBI investigation of a Saudi
family with close ties to the Saudi government that suddenly abandoned
its upscale home just outside Sarasota about two weeks before 9/11.

Pursuing the lead, Christensen contacted Senator Graham for his
insights into the Sarasota cell. Braced for the possibility that Graham
would decline comment because of classification restraints, Christensen
was stunned to learn that Graham—who had been chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee and co-chaired the joint Congressional inquiry
into 9/11—was unable to comment for an altogether different reason:
Graham said the FBI had never told him about its Sarasota investigation.

Broward Bulldog Editor Dan Christensen
Christensen then inquired with the FBI, which confirmed there had
been an investigation, but said it found no connection to 9/11. Next,
seeking to learn how they reached that conclusion, he requested the
FBI’s investigation documents using the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA), but the FBI said there were no documents matching the request.
Finding that completely implausible, in September 2012, Christensen and
the Broward Bulldog filed a FOIA lawsuit.

About six months later, the FBI sent Christensen 35 partially redacted pages that contained a bombshell conclusion directly
contradicting the government’s earlier denials: The investigation had
in fact “revealed many connections” between the Saudi family that fled
their home and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on
9/11/2001.” (Indeed, investigations showed the home had been called and
even visited by future 9/11 hijackers.)

In April 2014, as the Bulldog’s lawsuit progressed, Fort Lauderdale
U.S. District Judge William Zloch ordered the FBI to conduct a more
thorough search of its files, chiding
the government for advancing “nonsensical” legal arguments in its
effort to maintain secrecy. Later, he ordered the FBI to turn over more
than 80,000 pages from its Tampa office so he could personally review
them and reach his own conclusions about the need for secrecy. The
judge’s review of that enormous cache is still underway.

In July of 2014, the FBI released a new and intriguing document.
This one revealed that, on Halloween in 2001, the Manatee County
Sheriff’s Office was called by a citizen who observed a man discarding
items in a dumpster behind a rented storage unit in Bradenton, Florida.
After interviewing the man, who held a visa from Tunisia, police
searched the dumpster and found “a self-printed manual on terrorism and
Jihad, a map of the inside of an unnamed airport, a rudimentary last
will and testament, a weight to fuel ratio calculation for a Cessna 172
aircraft, flight training information from the Flight Training Center in
Venice and printed maps of Publix shopping centers in Tampa Bay.”

Attorney Tom Julin’s Pursuit of the 28 Pages

Attorney Tom Julin
Julin, in addition to providing an interesting elaboration on the
legal battle to liberate the FBI’s Sarasota files, explained the Broward
Bulldog’s attempts to secure the release of the 28-page finding on foreign government support of the 9/11 hijackers found in the 2002 report of the joint Congressional inquiry.

Julin is helping Christensen, Summers and Swan push for
the declassification of the 28 pages through a little-known process
called Mandatory Declassification Review.
Under that process, an agency’s refusal to declassify material can
ultimately be appealed to a multi-agency panel that reviews the material
and presents a recommendation to the president. The panel is now
reviewing the 28 pages. While there’s no deadline, Julin has been told
to expect the panel’s recommendation to President Obama sometime this
winter.

The first amendment attorney said he was hopeful the panel would take
the request seriously, pointing to the fact that “so many Congressmen
have said declassification will not harm the national security interest,
it will help the national security for the public to know what was Saudi Arabia’s role.”

Many More Questions Remain

Before opening up the discussion to questions from the audience,
Graham discussed some of the remaining mysteries around the 9/11 plot.
First, noting that 9/11 hijackers had spent significant amounts of time
in Paterson, NJ, Falls Church, VA and Palm Beach County, Graham said,
“We have been trying to find out, were there investigations similar to
what we know took place in Sarasota in those three areas and if so, what
result? We have run into exactly the same stone wall.”
Graham also explored the questions of:

Why would the Saudis support Islamic terrorists operating in the United States?

Why did the Bush administration shield Saudi Arabia by preventing the release of damning material?

This post shares just some of the many interesting points covered
during the event. To learn more, watch the full video below—then send a pre-written letter to Congress urging the release of the 28 pages.

Over
the last two days, an anonymous police officer pulled over drivers, not
to slap them with a ticket but to give them a $50 or $100 bill.

The policeman received $5,000 from a wealthy friend and was instructed to hand out the money to people in need.

The secret benefactor was inspired by a similar initiative by the Kansas City police, who gave away $100,000 instead of traffic tickets.

“In
the beginning, I did it a little like the way they did,” the Montreal
police officer told 98.5 FM. “I looked for vehicles that were beaten up,
those that had burnt-out lights, older cars. I’d intercept them for an
infraction and then give them a present instead of a ticket.”

One
of the first drivers he stopped was an anglophone woman driving a car
with a broken tail light and a baby girl in the back seat, the officer
said. He pulled her over and followed normal procedure, checking her
licence and registration before giving her a warning — and a hundred
bucks.

“Just with the warning, she was very, very, very happy.
When she saw the $100, it was almost hysteria. Let’s just say I saw a
lot of tears in those couple of days,” he said.

After finding it
too hard to determine who was really in need only by the look of their
car, the officer distributed the rest of the money to homeless people or
shelters, Montreal police spokesperson Commander Ian Lafrenière said.

“Santa
cop” doesn’t want to reveal his identity because he has been criticized
for not giving the money directly to certain charities, he explained.

The officer handed out the last of his bills on Thursday. “He told me: ‘I wish I had $100,000, there are so many people in need,” Lafrenière said.

Sergeant Detective Yves Francoeur, the president of the Police Brotherhood, said he called the Montreal police on Friday to ensure the secret Santa wouldn’t be punished for not following his regular duties.

“I think it’s much better to pull someone over to give them a $100 bill rather than a ticket to respect our quotas,” he said.

PETITION TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED
We, the undersigned citizens of Canada draw the attention of the House
to the following:
THAT, scientific and eyewitness evidence shows that the 9/11 Commission
Report is a fraudulent document and that those behind the report are
consciously or unconsciously guilty of covering up what happened on
9/11/2001. This evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that
World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 were brought down by demolition
explosives and that the official theory of the towers collapsing from
the airplanes and the ensuing fires is irrefutably false.
We further believe that elements within the US government were complicit
in the murder of thousands of people on 9/11/2001. This event brought
Canada into the so-called War on Terror, it changed our domestic and
foreign policies for the worse, and it will continue to have negative
consequences for us all if we refuse to look at the facts.
THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon Parliament to:
(1) Immediately launch its own investigation into the events of
9/11/2001 on behalf of the 24 Canadian citizens murdered in New York
City.
(2) Act lawfully on the findings of its own investigation by helping to
pursue the guilty parties in the international courts.
Committed to truth and accountability,
--------------------------------------------------

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the CIA torture report -- after over 170,000 people signed our petition demanding they do so -- and the details make us sick to our stomachs.

Simply put, the United States has tortured people -- meaning "waterboarding" and much more -- in
direct violation of its own War Crimes Act. And it violates the U.N.
Convention Against Torture -- which President Ronald Reagan signed.

We cannot allow what happened in the Bush-Cheney Administration to happen again.
Attorney General Eric Holder must appoint a special prosecutor
to hold accountable those who committed such crimes, and the Obama
Administration must dismiss CIA head John Brennan and all employees at
the CIA who were involved.

But despite his purported opposition to torture, President Obama
isn't going create meaningful repercussions for it unless we force him
to: